Constraining the interaction strength between dark matter and visible matter: II. scalar, vector and spin-3/2 dark matter

TL;DR

This paper analyzes constraints on scalar, vector, and spin-3/2 dark matter interactions with standard model particles using relic density, direct detection, and indirect detection data, highlighting complementary sensitivities and limitations of current experiments.

Contribution

It provides a model-independent framework with general 4-particle operators up to dimension 6 to constrain dark matter interactions, comparing experimental sensitivities across different detection methods.

Findings

Direct detection strongly constrains some operators.

Indirect detection is more sensitive for light dark matter (<70 GeV).

Some operators remain unconstrained by current experiments.

Abstract

We investigate the constraints on the scalar, vector and spin-3/2 dark matter interaction with the standard model particles, from the observations of dark matter relic density, the direct detection experiments of CDMS and XENON, and the indirect detection of the antiproton-to-proton ratio by PAMELA. A model independent way is adopted by constructing general 4-particle operators up to dimension 6 for the effective interaction between dark matter and standard model particles. We find that the constraints from different experiments are complementary with each other. Comparison among these constraints may exclude some effective models of dark matter and limit some parameters of others. The spin-independent direct detection gives strong constraints for some operators, while the indirect detection of antiproton-to-proton data can be more sensitive than direct detection or relic density for light dark matter (whose mass less than 70 GeV) in some cases. The constraints on some operators for spin-3/2 dark matter are shown to be similar to those on their analogous operators for Dirac fermionic dark matter. There are still some operators not sensitive to the current dark matter direct and indirect search experiments.